


Waning Season

by rosekay



Category: Swordspoint Series - Ellen Kushner
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Outsider, Post-Swordspoint, Violence, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 21:39:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosekay/pseuds/rosekay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone is looking for St Vier and a dangerous secret. Unfortunately for him, Alec Campion finds him first. (Well, almost.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waning Season

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brigdh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brigdh/gifts).



In the land of his childhood, where deep winters lingered, they told a story about creatures who gnashed their teeth beneath the ice, waiting. They had long fingers perfectly suited to to grasping the plump arm of some unsuspecting child who had unwisely wandered out alone. They took the children because they had no hearts or warmth of their own, and to look into their eyes was to give yourself to the winter. He had only ever been able to imagine them in vague terms, as shades or beasts or demons, just a blank wall of childish terror he didn't care to breach, but at this moment, in the very green eyes of the man who held a needle--of all things, a _needle_ \--poised to pierce his ear and brain, he saw a creature gnashing its teeth, waiting.

"Your people are from Arkenveldt."

In anyone else's voice, it might have been a question, but there was nothing uncertain about the green-eyed man's high-bred tones. Here was the sort of creamy aristocratic drawl seldom heard on these streets, at odds with the ragged, native patter. He knew who the green-eyed man was but had not expected to see the favor returned. The unease seemed to melt from the top of his skull into the rest of his body, lines of cool fire beneath the skin.

"Don't lie. I can smell the stinking furs on you." He had to fight to hold back a reaction to that. "It's very cold there, isn't it?" The tone of that rich voice remained conversational, as if they were simply waiting for the tea service, no glittering threat at his ear, no quietly bleeding swordsman just out of the line of his sight. 

He did not trust his voice, so he only blinked in answer.

"I've heard that dying in the ice is not so great a trial." The needle was very steady resting against the tender inside of his ear. Something about it galled more than a blade at his throat would have, a reedier weapon in a more intimate place. What he knew of his captor pointed to design and not chance. He thought the thunder of his heart hammering must be enough to set it shaking and bloody and deadly, but it was utterly still in the long, languid hand that held it. "After all the fuss, you simply feel warm and asleep. Isn't that right?"

Spoken like someone who had never passed a true winter. Oh, it snowed here, but this snow only perched on the city like a hesitant bird, some pale plumage to make the blood stand out more strikingly. He'd spent more of his life wandering these southern cities in the shadow of a fallen monarchy than he had in the north, but that was the sort of winter that settled in your bones to stay. 

The green eyes narrowed a fraction, enough to lengthen an already-long face, and in beautiful symmetry with the pressure of the needle increasing just a breath. The cold, delicate prick of it inside his ear made his stomach roil in anticipation, a sort of sick fear that made his back slick with sweat.

"Isn't that right?" Repeated like he was only a forgetful child.

He managed another nod. This garnered him a chilly smile, the sort that made him long for the more forthright anger it replaced.

"There are draughts, you know, that will make you feel the same. Just a bite, then only warmth. Easier than most deserve, I suppose." There was nothing easy in the way each word dripped like frost into his ear.

There was a lone cup on the table. 

*

This is what had happened.

He had acquainted himself casually with the details of the infamous trial that could still light a fire in certain parts even years later, and rather intimately with every duel the swordsman at the center of it had fought afterwards, and even those that had happened before. Most of the man's opponents were stiff beneath the earth, but there were always witnesses, from pickpockets to minor lordlings, who claimed they'd felt the spray of hot blood at the time. He'd been diligent enough at this that when he finally offered his own challenge, very little surprised him.

The watching took a year, and the meeting itself only a moment.

At his first close look, St Vier was an unremarkable man, graceful enough and built slight in the way southerners tended to be, though he had a pleasing wiry strength to him, and seemingly undeserving of all the wary words the ambassador had committed to paper. The ambassador, his kin had told him, was a cold man suited to his new post, with one eye and no heart. In his letters, his pen always dug into the paper as if he were trying to spear a boar with each new line, a man with deep anger.

The only thing he noted about St Vier's appearance was the surprising color of the man's eyes, an almost laughably romantic shade like a mountain flower, incongruous in his stubbled face with its deliberately bland expressions. There were no swordsmen in Arkenveldt, not in the way they feted and despised them here--only men who knew swords. And though the ambassador had impressed upon him the threat _this_ swordsman in particular posed, part of him had expected to find a drunk or a dandy, a soft, chattering southerner who'd never walked the ice.

St Vier looked no different than a hundred other lean, graceful men wandering this city with a stride accustomed to a sword, but he had a stillness that distinguished him, had the perfect strong-tendoned wrists that joined with steadiness in the opening stance.

And he had looked for this exactly, the poise, the lack of any wasted movement, could whisper the steps in his head, how the man would cut this way, feint this way, all the while reading his opponent, dissecting the next steps of their dance. And then, the twist and the last, elegant thrust, so clean it would break your heart. Other swordsmen frequently made a mess of things, broken skin and broken bones chipping away at each prospective, fleeting masterpiece, but not St Vier. Even with the turmoil over the revelation of his lover's identity, or who exactly had hired him out, his humble Riverside rat's lofty connections to a gilded name like Tremontaine, this pristine line remained unbroken. 

Except this is what he had heard in his year of watching, not from the common folk but from other swordsmen, who died often and talked often. St Vier was missing his mark. He had developed a taste for cruelty. They spoke about some lord who had met an untidy end many years ago, how he must be on another warpath.

In the drafty Riverside apartment, full of fat, misshapen candles, he could see the truth of it seven moves in. The fourth move, a slanting feint and slash that faltered just a step, enough to open up a shallow cut on his arm, he thought he was being toyed with, but by the eighth, he could see that St Vier was compensating. His eyes would flicker a moment too late when he was tested, and he over-reached on his attacks. He was feared for his prescience, the way his eyes could follow steel, but there were only wide arcs here guesses.

When he flicked a feint quite deliberately by St Vier's left eye, there was barely at all at first, and most of that from the cocked head, _listening_ He pressed this advantage to open a gash along the man's ribs, slipping through his guard and feeling the weight of his blade skitter on bone. The choked gasp this drew out of St Vier was swallowed almost as quickly as it sounded, and he only staggered for a breath as he recovered, using a rickety old chair to give himself a little space.

In Arkenveldt, they taught children to wait, so he was happy to let St Vier have a moment, happy to catalog the way those eyes swept the room, far too quickly for true focus.

When he went in though, he went quickly, driving up St Vier's weak side, and grasping with his off hand where the wound had bloomed dark over his shirt, the shudder of muscle beneath his fingers wet and present. The ambassador had given him a message, and he meant to deliver it.

*

The someday-Duke of Tremontaine's ragged hair doing nothing to hide the fine bones of his face or his pure-grained arrogance.

The man he held under his control was recalling how much like a scarecrow he looked slamming open the door, the way that St Vier had seemed attuned to the sound of him like he had been to little else, even during their duel, and how he'd pitched himself forward, letting the skin of his neck split upon his opponent's blade, so he could slam the hilt of his own to a suddenly unprotected haze.

In a daze, he had slowly collected details, like the filth of the floor against his cheek and the slow receding of the ringing in his head. Even more slowly, the sounds of Campion cursing, and St Vier's rougher, slurred voice in answer. He had blinked, and turned his head to see the two of them toppled against each other in the corner of the room, Campion's long fingers holding something to St Vier's side, his face pressed against the stubbled throat so that the blood mingled over them both. He had thought the man was saying, "I'm a fool," the way you would announce a death, but it didn't seem right.

He had blinked again and been upright in a chair, hands bound firmly behind him, a better surety the needle that had come, vicious like a cat, to rest against the inside of his ear. When he'd focused, it was at a room hastily straightened, a table arranged with a fragrant-smelling cup, and a living swordsman whose extraordinary eyes were trained on him, even as he held a bloody compress to his side, coolly ignoring the red wash of his own neck. It had only been a thin slash after all. 

At this moment, he decided to look at the cup rather than the man.

The man, his hand still steady on the needle, said, "You work for the ambassador."

This man had his death held in two places, and a wounded lover dumped haphazardly on a rattily-damasked sofa. 

"Yes." His uncle had written so glowingly of the opportunity, the chance to come back. He'd been asked because of his northern blood, his ties there still, and because he was fresh to Riverside, becoming a fad on the hill with his blade. 

"You've been watching us."

"Him."

"You see--"

"--that he won't be able to, soon." A swordsman lived by his hands and his eyes. All of St Vier's skill meant nothing if he couldn't place his body. Though he knew the precipice to which he clung, his heart still raced at his daring.

Campion leaned close, his breath coming quickly. "I have no love for vengeful fools or those who carry secrets--do you understand? I could take _your_ eyes, and it wouldn't be quick. I could take your tongue with Richard's sword. I could shatter this eardrum I've been so kindly toying with. You have broken my--"

"You can't let me go back, I know."

"You don't have to be afraid." The voice was St Vier's, a surprise. He remembered how gentle Campion's fingers had been upon the bloody neck, the way they'd been held in turn. He would not be allowed to tell of anything he'd learned. There was a scraping sound, and he could smell blood and sweat and leather more closely. Campion was tense beside him, but said nothing as St Vier came close enough for him to meet those eyes, jewel dark in the bad light.

"You should always know your mark," he said, and his voice was brutally gentle. He was hobbled, maybe half-blind, bled pale and unwell, and it was clear now that he didn't need his wrists or eyes to deliver a death swift and clean still.

"On my sword, I've written nothing."

Campion began to scoff, though he let the needle ease out far enough so that its tip was merely pricking the shell of his ear.

St Vier said, "On your sword."

In the land of his childhood, they said that giving yourself to the winter was a thing so quiet you even forgot about the creatures beneath the ice, that you merely drifted into a dazed warmth, and were gone before you could even straighten your limbs.

He nodded. "I think I'd like a drink."

Campion stepped far back enough that he could see the unreadable look the two men exchanged. He was pale and pinched, gripping the needle so hard his palm was white except for a point of scarlet where he was piercing himself. St Vier looked as if he would not keep his feet for much longer, but he nodded, at Campion rather than at the man who had tried to kill him. 

The draught was fragrant, warm down his throat as promised before it seized his limbs.

St. Vier had begun to list against Campion, who didn't look strong enough to support his weight but bore it nonetheless.

He gave to the man in the chair a smile. On his long face, it was a glittering thing, all teeth.

**Author's Note:**

> Love this fandom and thrilled to have been able to jump on this as a pinch hit. Thank you so much for the wonderful prompts and suggestions on these characters.
> 
> A few clarifications:
> 
> 1\. I know there's very little evidence in PotS that Ferris had any contact with anyone in Riverside, much less something this bald, in those intervening years, but I'm banking on there also being meager things pointing to the contrary.
> 
> 2\. This is probably fudging the timeline of Alec's ascension and St Vier's going blind a little, but again, begging fic license.


End file.
